What is Diabetes

Without a proper management plan, people with diabetes can develop serious or deadly complications.

It is a good idea to start realizing how you and your family are affected by the outcome of a diabetes diagnosis.

To outsmart and reduce some risks, this condition requires that you and your healthcare team think of an adaptable realistic plan.

Diabetes is a condition in which the body produces very small amounts of insulin or can't  adequately use the available insulin, or produces no insulin at all. 

Normally much of the food we eat is broken down by the digestive system into a sugar called glucose, the body's main source of fuel. The fuel Glucose passes into the bloodstream and into our cells, which use it for the energy we all need.

Most of our cells require insulin to trigger and unlock the receptacles of our cells, therefore allowing glucose (the fuel) to enter the cells. Insulin is normally produced by the pancreas, a gland organ located behind the stomach.

In healthy non diabetics, eating signals the pancreas to produce a specific amount of insulin, therefore enabling glucose to enter the cells.

But if the process doesn't work properly diabetes develops.

In people with diabetes the pancreas produces small amounts or no insulin, or due to a failure in the body's system, cells don't respond to the available insulin.

As a result, glucose builds up in the blood overflows into the urine and passes out of the body as waste. Hence, the body loses its main source of fuel, even though the blood contains large amounts of the fuel glucose.

Management of Diabetes

Management of a diabetic lifestyle isn't as simple as just taking a pill or injecting insulin, it's absolutely essential that you receive and understand as much information as possible.

Diabetics with a well managed plan can expect to live full and healthy lives. It requires special attention to all your meals, adjusting insulin doses to food, exercise, reading, and understanding diabetes literature and checking blood sugar levels.

This should be done in accordance with a personalized plan developed by you and your healthcare providers.

Disciplining Yourself....

Diabetes if left untreated can cause subtle and immediate complications that affect almost every part of the body. These complications can include kidney disease, nerve damage, as well as a vascular disease that can lead to amputations, heart disease, blindness and in many cases strokes. 

Having type 1 diabetes (producing no insulin at all), or type 2 diabetes (producing some),  increases your risk of heart disease and stroke. Research indicates that heart disease and stroke are the major causes of death of people with diabetes. Approximately 2/3 of people with diabetes die from cardiovascular disease.

People with this disease are at least twice as likely to have heart problems or a stroke as those who are healthy and don't have diabetes. Therefore being vigilant about exercise, blood glucose levels, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels can lower the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Disciplining yourself to be vigilant is a key part of any diabetic management plan.  Thus, managing diabetes is essential to living a full and healthy life.

 Pre diabetes

Millions of people have pre diabetes.

In many pre diabetics some damaging effects to the body, and particularly the heart and circulatory system may start during the pre diabetes phase of the disease.

People are considered to have pre diabetes when they have fasting (not eating for one night prior to testing), glucose levels between 101 and 125 mg/dL after an overnight fast, or they have abnormal glucose tolerance as indicated by one or more tests used to measure glucose levels.

Pre diabetes describes an increasingly common condition in which blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not at levels high enough to be considered as type 1 or 2 diabetes .

In one study by The American Diabetes Association, about 11% of the people with pre diabetes developed type two diabetes each year during the average three years of follow up.

People with this condition can go on to develop diabetes 2 within 10 years unless they make at least moderate changes in their overall diet and level of physical activity.

1. What is Diabetes